Archives for posts with tag: Rape

‘Handles’

March 12, 2023 //
0

I’m afraid things are a little bit more complicated.
In this translation, the Turkish proverb puts the onus on the ‘forest’ for what’s going on.
Which isn’t helpful. It somehow validates the notion that ‘people’ get what they deserve.
The way I see it, the responsibility belongs to the wooden handles. The axes – the steel parts, do what is in their nature to do. Axes split wood, dictators dictate… and so on.
On the other hand, those who ‘help in the process’… While it also is in their ‘wooden’ nature to be helpful, the handles do not necessarily have to attach themselves to forest hacking axes.
While it is in their nature to give advice, analysts and pundits do not necessarily have to court the Trumps/Putins/Xis of this world.

Blaming the people for voting for those who are being put forward by very skill full political promoters is not that different from blaming the victim of a rape. Yes, she should have known better than to drink that much at the party but the rapist didn’t necessarily had to take advantage of her.

Advertisement
Tags , , , , ,
Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology

Future

July 23, 2022 //
0

“A priest and rabbi see a child walking down the street.
Priest : Let’s fuck that child.
Rabbi : Out of what??”

Alternativelly

“A priest and a communist pass by a boy.
Priest: lets fuck that boy.
Communist: and blame it on capitalists.”

When I was growing up, fucking was about bringing new life on the face of the Earth.
Or about all those involved reaching orgasm.

Nowadays we find it funny to joke about children being raped.

Then we wonder…

“Who fucked up future?!?”

Tags , , ,
Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, The kind of world we live in, yes but

Bill Cosby’s rights

July 7, 2021 //
0

“Bill Cosby was released from prison Wednesday after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault,“

Let’s recap the events, as described in the NY Times article.

2004 – Ms Constand was raped by Mr. Cosby.
According to the 2018 sentence!
Please note that the Pennsylvania High Court didn’t say the 2018 jurors had ‘seen things”. Only that the trial shouldn’t have taken place!

2005 – The district attorney prosecuting the case “announced in a news release at the time that after an investigation he had found “insufficient” evidence. He later testified that he had given Mr. Cosby the assurance to encourage him to testify in a subsequent civil case brought by Ms. Constand. (A civil suit she filed against Mr. Cosby was settled in 2006 for $3.38 million.)”
As he was convinced he didn’t have enough evidence to make a penal case against Mr. Cosby, the prosecutor promised the defendant he will not be further prosecuted if he testified (a.k.a. ‘told the truth’) in the civil suit.
“In that testimony, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving quaaludes to women he was pursuing for sex.”

2006 – The civil case was settled for $3.38 million. As in Bill Cosby agreed to pay that amount of money for something the prosecution wasn’t sure that it was able to convince a jury that he had actually done it.

2015 – The next district attorney reopened the case. And got a conviction. Despite the fact that the ‘main’ evidence had been provided by the defendant himself. Given after he was promised he wasn’t incriminating himself in a penal way.

2018 – Mr. Cosby is convicted for something he had done 14 years ago.

2021 – The Pennsylvania Supreme Court decides that Mr. Cosby had been practically duped into incriminating himself, found this to be unacceptable and released the former prisoner.

What are we, ordinary citizens, to make out of all these?

Be glad that our individual rights have been upheld?
It makes a lot of sense!
After all, upholding individual rights is what makes the difference between a free society and an authoritarian one.
Between people being free and finding themselves at the whims of the government.

Ask ourselves ‘what about the individual rights of the victim’?
That also makes sense.
But my experience of living under a dictatorship strongly suggests that letting some guilty people walk free is a small price to pay for making resonably sure that a government – any government, doesn’t accrue too much power over the individuals making up the people.

Ask ourselves ‘what happened to us’?
What drives so many of to use constitutional rights as loopholes?
Is this OK?

No legislation will ever be perfect!
That’s why verdicts are given by ‘peers’, judges are given so much ‘leeway’ and why, in general, the law is administered by highly trained responsible people and not by ‘machines’.

After all, how we use whatever we have at our disposal – legislation included, speaks more about ourselves than about the things we use and the circumstances in which we make our choices.

Tags , , ,
Categories authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, feminism, freedom, gender roles, In English, Intent, Mindset, Politically induced fragility, Psychology, Rule of Law, skin in the game, teleology, The kind of world we live in, Trust

Knowledge

April 3, 2020 //
0

Any attempt to learn something, to increase your knowledge about a certain subject, is nothing more and nothing less than an attempt to become intimate with it.

Students have two open roads ahead of them.

One which implies a lot of wooing, patience and a certain degree of self appeasement.
The other asks for a direct, almost blunt, approach.
While the first is more like the student dancing around the subject, the second is akin to a hands on combat.

The results are, obviously, different.
Not exactly different. Only fundamentally.

The difference is very much like the difference between courtship and rape.
The end result might be a child. But…

Same thing with art and science.

It is true that in order to have sex, both partners need to be, at least somewhat, naked.
But there is all the difference in the world between having sex and making love!

The end result is only apparently the same!

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories arrogance, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, In English, Intent, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust, yes but

A ‘periscope’ into the netherworld

April 20, 2016 //
0

rape in the not so virtual reality

Two concepts are slowly merging into one and becoming more and more obvious for the most oblivious among us.

Virtual reality was mentioned for the first time way back in the XXth century.
“In 1938, Antonin Artaud described the illusory nature of characters and objects in the theatre as “la réalité virtuelle” in a collection of essays, Le Théâtre et son double. The English translation of this book, published in 1958 as The Theater and its Double,[2] is the earliest published use of the term “virtual reality”.”
Nowadays the concept has been widened to cover a lot more than what’s happening inside the theaters.
In fact, the technology used to create VR is able to transform everyplace in a stage, everybody in an actor and to broadcast everything almost everywhere.

The other concept I was mentioning at the beginning of my post is a lesser known one.
“The Social Construction of Reality“, published in 1966 by Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann eloquently explains how various groups of people collectively adapt their historically accrued habits (cultures) to the ever-changing surrounding reality. One of the sources of change being human activity itself.

The latest, that I heard of, addition to the realm of the not so virtual anymore reality is Periscope. A mobile app that lets its user broadcast, live, whatever he/she deems interesting enough from what is taking place around him/her. What is broadcast has a ‘shelf live’ of 24 hours but can be deleted at wish or made permanent. Also the sharing ‘voyeur’ has control over the audience, it can be set as ‘public’ or ‘private’ – and broadcast only to a selected few.

Some days ago two female high-school students and friends, one 18 and the other 17, met a 29 male in a Columbus, Ohio, mall. He bought them a bottle of vodka and “encouraged them to meet him the following day“.
The girls ‘honored’ the invitation, the three  ‘socialized’ for a while – read “had all been drinking“, and then the male proceeded to raping the youngest of the girls.
The older one live-streamed the rape using Periscope.

“The case came to light when authorities were contacted after an out-of-state friend of the woman saw the images, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said.“

It is not unusual for a rape to remain unreported by the victim. It’s not OK, but it happens.
Also it is not that unusual for a rape to remain unreported even after friends or relatives of the victim learn of the event. Again, it is not OK but it is known to have happened before.

Yet this is the first time that I’ve heard of a rape that had taken place practically in public and which wasn’t reported ‘live’ to the police.

“‘She does everything possible to contain the situation even to the point of asking while it’s being filmed to these Periscope followers, “What should I do now? What should I do now?”‘ Shamansky said.” Shamansky being a lawyer for the older girl, who is currently charged with rape, alongside the male perpetrator.
Separately, she is being charged with “illegal use of a minor in a nudity-oriented material or performance” for “livestreaming her friend nude the day before the assault“.

And how did the viewers react to the broadcast? Except for the “out-of-state friend of the woman” who reported the incident, of course?

Here’s the prosecutor’s side of the story:

“O’Brien said Lonina is seen trying to help only briefly during the 10-minute video. O’Brien said the victim was clearly screaming ‘stop’ and ‘no’ during the assault.
Although Lonina told police she was trying to record the assault as evidence, her behavior as people watching via Periscope ‘liked’ the assault painted a different picture, O’Brien said.

‘She got, I guess, taken up with all the “likes” that her livestream was getting and therefore continued to do it, and did nothing to aid the victim,’ O’Brien said.“

I don’t know what, or even if, she could have done anything in a really effective manner – remember that all three had been drinking – but I know for sure that at least some people were watching the live stream. The ones “liking” it.

I still cannot understand how come all of them failed to call 911.

Tags , , , ,
Categories altruism, Choices we make, cooperation, corruption, effective communication, Frames of mind, gender roles, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Social justice, The kind of world we live in

Theology of rape?!?

August 13, 2015 //
0

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape Claiming the Quran’s support, the Islamic State codifies sex slavery in conquered regions of Iraq and Syria and uses the practice as a recruiting tool. Written by RUKMINI CALLIMACHI; Photographs by MAURICIO LIMAAUG. 13, 2015

This is not as much about a particular religion as it is about the dominant religion of a certain place loosing its ability to fulfill its mission.
By ‘religion’ I understand the set of ties that transforms a certain population into a community, the rest is ritual.
When those ties no longer do what they are meant to do – make the individual feel that he belongs and therefore impart a certain sense of safety – many members of that erstwhile community start to loose their marbles.
Some kill themselves, pretending to be martyrs who die for a sacred cause, some others rape the innocents that happen to cross their paths.
The fact that some ‘religious leaders’ use the teachings of a particular religion to encourage these abominations only proves that the so called leaders are nothing but fraudsters that feed on other peoples’ misery.
More than a hundred years ago Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, had wrote ‘Le Suicide’ and fully explained all this. Maybe what we need is to re-read it. All you have to do is follow the link.
Tags , , , ,
Categories Choices we make, collective identity, Frames of mind, Social justice

Of Abel and Cain

July 30, 2015 //
1

It seems that people have finally started to understand what rape really means and to care about the victims.

But why rape in the first place?

When considering this subject we need to clearly define the concepts if we really what to understand what all it’s about.
Sometimes people get carried away. Maybe under some ‘influence’, she (half) willingly agrees at first and gets cold feet at some point but he doesn’t stop. That is indeed rape and should be punished as such but that is not the kind of rape I’m concerned about now.
What I had in mind when starting this is the ‘predatory’ rape. That kind of rape that is planned before hand by the perpetrator and cannot, under any circumstances, be treated with any degree of understanding. For instance gang or serial rape.

At this moment I feel the need to draw your attention to some less obvious kinds of predatory rape. For example the kind of ‘big game hunting’ that is going on now in Africa. Regardless of who does it. Law abiding citizens who pay for their permits and then bend the rules or poachers who act in a completely callous manner.

Another kind of predatory rape that is less discussed about is prostitution. Some of you will tell me that whatever takes place between consenting adults (two or even more) is nobody’s business. True enough but have you considered the role played by the pimp? You know, that guy who under the pretext of taking care of the ‘sexual worker’ exploits her savagely? Have you noticed that most of the prostitutes come from someplace else and have usually been lured under some false pretexts? That so many of them are very young and not so bright?
I can’t stop wondering what kind of satisfaction can be had during or after such an encounter… Specially today when there are so many single’s bars and internet dating services… But there one has to pass a certain exam, the partner has to agree, has to find you at least acceptable. There is a certain risk that you might be found wanting. While when hiring a prostitute there is no such risk. She has no say about her ‘clients’. And that’s why this IS rape.

So could it be that rape, predatory rape, is an action through which the rapist proves to himself that he is in ‘total control’?
And in the case of gang rapes – which are usually initiated and led by one of the gang members, very seldom this kind of things happen ‘spontaneously’ – the initiator does it to prove not only to himself but also to the rest of the gang who is the ‘top dog’.

To be continued.

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Choices we make, Frames of mind, Psychology
%d bloggers like this: